Выставка, посвященная работе журналистов в годы Великой Отечественной войны

During the Great Patriotic War, many photojournalists from across the country were assigned to active army units, where they took part in creating a visual chronicle of the war. Among them were photographers from Leningrad whose works are presented in this exhibition: Boris Vasilyevich Utkin, David Mikhailovich Trankhtenberg, Boris Pavlovich Kudoyarov, Semyon Grigoryevich Nordshtein, Mikhail Anatolyevich Trakhman, Georgy Fyodorovich Konovalov, Vladimir Illarionovich Kapustin, and Georgy Ivanovich Lugovoy.

Their photographs, regularly published in the TASS Windows, played an essential role in the life of the besieged city. They informed the public about the daily heroism of Leningrad’s civilians and the soldiers of the Leningrad Front, sustaining people’s faith, determination, and will to continue living and working while fulfilling their duty.

Over the four years of war, Leningrad photo correspondents produced thousands of negatives capturing the bitterness of retreat and evacuation, the aftermath of the first bombings of Leningrad, the everyday life of soldiers at the front, and the harrowing scenes of daily existence in the besieged city, where its inhabitants, under the most extreme conditions, continued to labor for the sake of victory. The central figures of these photographs were ordinary citizens, those with whom the photographers shared the hardships of war and together created a visual record of historical memory.

Both the photographers whose names are known to us today and many who remain unknown fought alongside soldiers on the front lines. Thanks to their work, authentic images of the heroic pages of our wartime history have come down to us, allowing contemporary viewers to immerse themselves in these great and tragic events.

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GEORGY FEDOROVICH KONOVALOV 

GEORGY FEDOROVICH KONOVALOV  (1911-1993)

From the first days of the Great Patriotic War, Konovalov worked as a frontline photo correspondent for the LenTASS photo chronicle, photographing on the Pulkovo axis, on the Karelian and Volkhov fronts, and in the Arctic region. From 1943, he served as a roving photo correspondent for TASS. He traveled extensively across the roads of many fronts and ended the war in Hungary.

His photograph The Sanitary Nurse became part of the golden canon of the photographic chronicle of the Great Patriotic War. After the war, Konovalov worked for Leningrad newspapers and as a camera operator at the Leningrad Television Studio.

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BORIS PAVLOVICH KUDOYAROV

Boris Pavlovich Kudoyarov(1898-1973)

Boris Pavlovich Kudoyarov was born in 1898 in Tashkent. He completed his education at a pre-revolutionary gymnasium. From 1917 to 1920, he served in the Red Army. He first took up photography as an amateur, photographing sporting events. In 1925, Kudoyarov began working as a photojournalist for the magazine Physical Culture and Sport. From 1926, he worked for the Russfoto agency, later for Unionfoto, and from 1931 as a photo correspondent for the Soyuzfoto agency. In 1933, he became a photojournalist for the newspaper Izvestia, and several years later joined Komsomolskaya Pravda. During the Great Patriotic War, Kudoyarov served as a military photo correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda. He spent 900 days of the Siege of Leningrad in the city. His photographs documenting the heroic defense of Leningrad were regularly published in the central Soviet press. Boris Pavlovich Kudoyarov died tragically in 1973 during a professional assignment in Central Asia.

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VLADIMIR ILLARIONOVICH KAPUSTIN

VLADIMIR ILLARIONOVICH KAPUSTIN (1909-1973)

From 1942 to 1947, Kapustin worked as a correspondent for the LenTASS photo chronicle. He photographed the combat daily life of aviators and anti-aircraft gunners, women fighters of civil defense and air defense units, medical personnel, and young workers at Leningrad factories. In August 1943, he was sent behind enemy lines, where he spent more than six months as a special war photo correspondent with the 5th Partisan Brigade, taking part directly in combat operations. He went through the brigade’s entire combat path and returned to Leningrad in March 1944.

During this period, Kapustin produced many unique photographs documenting combat actions, the everyday life of partisans, and the lives of civilians in occupied territories. He was awarded state honors, including the Order of the Red Star and several medals, among them the Partisan of the Patriotic War medal. After the war, Kapustin worked in various institutions and, from 1952 to 1964, once again served as a photo correspondent for LenTASS.

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NIKOLAI ALEXANDROVICH KALASHNIKOV

NIKOLAI ALEXANDROVICH KALASHNIKOV (1911–1981)

Nikolai Alexandrovich Kalashnikov was born on March 19, 1911, in the stanitsa of Nekrasovskaya, Ust-Labinsk District, Krasnoyarsk Krai. At the age of seventeen, he moved to Leningrad, where he worked at one of the city’s factories. In 1929, he entered the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. After completing his second year, he transferred as a cadet to a military-technical aviation school. In 1931, he joined the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). From 1935 to 1937, Kalashnikov served as an aircraft technician in the 15th Heavy Bomber Brigade of the Kyiv Military District. In 1939, he graduated from the Higher Military-Political Courses of the Red Army. Until October 1940, he worked as head of a department at the newspaper of the Headquarters of the 11th Army.

From October 1940 to January 1943, Kalashnikov served as an instructor for the newspaper The Motherland Calls of the 125th Rifle Division of the Leningrad Front. From 1944 to 1946, he was editor of the divisional newspaper of the 23rd Artillery Division, with which he fought in the Baltic states, Poland, and Germany. He ended the war in Berlin.

During the war years, using his Leica camera, Kalashnikov produced thousands of photographs documenting the combat daily life of soldiers and officers of the Red Army, as well as the everyday existence of civilians in besieged Leningrad. For his service during the Great Patriotic War, he was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Patriotic War, and the medals For Combat Merit, For the Defense of Leningrad, For the Capture of Königsberg, For Valour and Independence, and For Victory over Germany.

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THE ROAD OF LIFE

“The history of the Ladoga Road is a poem of courage, perseverance, and steadfastness of the Soviet people. The road lived a full frontline life. It was, in fact, a front line itself. And the people who worked on it were one of the steadfast detachments of the defenders of Leningrad. They knew that they had been entrusted with the most honorable of tasks—the supply of the heroic city and the supply of the front-line troops—and they worked with the greatest self-sacrifice…

One day poets and writers will compose songs about the Leningrad Road of Life. They will recall how columns of trucks crossed the ice carrying supplies from Moscow, Sverdlovsk, Gorky, and Stalingrad; how gifts from Central Asia were transported along it; how red wagon trains of partisans from the occupied districts of Leningrad Region stretched across it. With deep gratitude, the country will learn of the heroism of every worker and soldier who built and safeguarded this road, and of the great attention devoted to the ice highway by Leningrad’s party organizations. The soldiers, commanders, and political officers of the Ladoga route demonstrated clarity of purpose, perseverance in achieving that goal, endurance and courage, bravery and steadfastness—qualities characteristic of the Soviet people.”

– Pravda newspaper, May 9, 1942

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BORIS VASILYEVICH UTKIN

BORIS VASILYEVICH UTKIN (1917–1999)

From 1938, Utkin worked as a photo correspondent for LenTASS. During the war, he served as a military photo correspondent on the Leningrad Front and the 2nd Baltic Front. He created a photographic chronicle of the combat daily life of the defenders of the Oreshek Fortress.

After the war, Utkin worked for the newspaper Evening Leningrad, served as a special correspondent for the magazines Soviet Union and Ogonyok, for the Soviet Information Bureau, and worked as a photographer for the art production combines of the RSFSR Art Fund.

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GEORGY IVANOVICH LUGOVOY

GEORGY IVANOVICH LUGOVOY (1900-2001)

Georgy Ivanovich Lugovoy developed an interest in photography at the age of ten. With the outbreak of the Revolution, his passion for photography intensified. On February 23, 1919, Lugovoy photographed a Red Army parade on Palace Square. One image from this shoot was later widely reproduced throughout the USSR in history textbooks.

After the end of the Civil War, he enrolled in a film and photography technical school. In the 1930s, he began collaborating with the news agencies Press-Clip-Foto and Union-Foto. At the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, being of draft age, he was in Leningrad and endured the full hardship of the first winter of the siege. In the autumn of 1941, he volunteered for the front and became a military photo correspondent for the divisional newspaper For the Motherland! of the 85th Rifle Division, which took part in the defense of Leningrad.

His surviving negatives depict scenes from the everyday life of soldiers and the suffering of civilians in occupied territories. A large portion of Lugovoy’s photographic archive was lost without trace after being confiscated by NKVD officers. In 1944, Georgy Lugovoy was awarded the medal For Combat Merit. In the postwar period and until his retirement, he worked for the Leningrad newspaper Smena.

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Mickhail Anatolyevich Trakhman

ТMickhail Anatolyevich Trakhman (1918-1976)

In 1936, after completing school, Mikhail Trakhman enrolled in courses training assistant camera operators and began working at a newsreel studio. From 1938, he worked as a photojournalist for Uchitelskaya Gazeta. In 1939, he was drafted into the army for compulsory service and took part in the Soviet–Finnish War.

From 1941, Trakhman served as a special correspondent for the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda. Beginning in 1942, he worked as a special war correspondent for TASS and Sovinformburo. He photographed in besieged Leningrad and on the Pskov and Belorussian fronts. On several occasions, he was sent behind enemy lines to partisan units in northwestern Russia. The photographs he took during partisan raids became part of the golden canon of war photography.

Trakhman documented the liberation of Poland and Hungary. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the medal For the Defense of Leningrad, and the Partisan of the Patriotic War medal. After his demobilization from the army in 1946, he worked as a photo correspondent for the magazine Ogonyok. From 1949 to 1957, he was employed at the USSR Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy (VDNKh) photo publishing house. From 1957 to 1959, he worked for the magazine Soviet Screen, and from 1959 to 1967 served as a special correspondent for Literaturnaya Gazeta.

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SEMYON GRIGORYEVICH NORDSHTEIN
DAVID MIKHAILOVICH TRAKHTENBERG

Semyon Grigoryevich Nordshtein (1909–?)

During the Great Patriotic War, Semyon Nordshtein worked as a photo correspondent for LenTASS. Over the course of the war, he was awarded the medals For the Defense of Leningrad and For Courage, as well as the Order of the Red Star. He received this order for inventing, during the war years, a device that made it possible to photograph from covered positions using a FED camera through artillery stereoscopic binoculars. Thanks to this invention, Soviet troops were able to study enemy firing positions using panoramic photographs.

Nordshtein’s photographs taken from front-line positions and from the Road of Life were published in many periodicals. One of his most famous images is “Meeting of Soldiers of the Volkhov and Leningrad Fronts near Settlement No. 1.”

David Mikhailovich Trakhtenberg (1906–1975)

Trained as an artist, David Trakhtenberg frequently employed photography in his work. In the late 1930s, he became a photo correspondent for the newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda. He spent all nine hundred days of the Siege of Leningrad in the besieged city, photographing the life of its defenders.

Trakhtenberg became a recognized chronicler of blockaded Leningrad, creating the unique series The Breaking of the Leningrad Blockade. After the war, he published several photo albums, including Nevsky Prospekt in the Days of War and Peace, The Feat of Leningrad, and Hero City Leningrad. His photographs were included in virtually all major publications devoted to the siege of the city on the Neva, including the book Leningrad — “The City That Defeated Death”.

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THE SIEGE OF LENINGRAD

“…Today, after 1 Р.M., the accursed fascists opened heavy artillery fire on the city. Many high-caliber shells exploded in the central districts: at the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and 3rd of July Street, on Bolshaya Mikhailovskaya Square, and on the Griboyedov Canal near Kazan Square. As it was Sunday, there were many people on the streets and in the trams; consequently, there were many killed and wounded, many maimed. Pools of blood. Shells also exploded in the Moskovsky District beyond the Obvodny Canal and along the October Railway. The fierce shelling continued until 7 P.M. Significant damage was inflicted on buildings and municipal facilities. The German occupiers will face merciless retribution. Such atrocities cannot be forgiven…”

N. Gorshkov, August 8, 1943

By the Light of a Half-Candle. A Blockade Diary Found Fifty Years Later in the Secret Archives of the KGB / N. P. Gorshkov. Saint Petersburg: Bell, 1993.

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Last updated on 20.01.2026